special priests. Indeed the worship of the kings sometimes cast that of the gods into the shade. Thus in the reign of Merenra a high official declared that he had built many holy places in order that the spirits of the king, the ever-living Merenra, might be invoked “more than all the gods.”[1] The King of Egypt seems to have shared with the sacred animals the blame of any failure of the crops.[2] He was addressed as “Lord of heaven, lord of earth, sun, life of the whole world, lord of time, measurer of the sun’s course, Tum for men, lord of well-being, creator of the harvest, maker and fashioner of mortals, bestower of breath upon all men, giver of life to all the host of gods, pillar of heaven, threshold of the earth, weigher of the equipoise of both worlds, lord of rich gifts, increaser of the corn” etc.[3] Yet, as we should expect, the exalted powers thus ascribed to the king differed in degree rather than in kind from those which every Egyptian claimed for himself. Tiele observes that “as every good man at his death became Osiris, as every one in danger or need could by the use of magic sentences assume the form of a deity, it is quite comprehensible how the king, not only after death, but already during his life, was placed on a level with the deity.”[4]
Thus it appears that the same union of sacred
- ↑ C. P. Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion, p. 103 sq. On the worship of the kings see also E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, i. § 52; A. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, p. 91 sqq.; V. von Strass und Carnen, Die altägyptischen Götter und Göttersagen, p. 467 sqq.
- ↑ Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii. 5, 14; Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 73.
- ↑ V. von Strauss und Carnen, op. cit. p. 470.
- ↑ Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion, p. 105. The Babylonian and Assyrian kings seem also to have been regarded as gods; at least the oldest names of the kings on the monuments are preceded by a star, the mark for “god.” But there is no trace in Babylon and Assyria of temples and priests for the worship of the kings. See Tiele, Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte, p. 492 sq.
